


saudade

by fullyerased



Series: mcyt word-inspired works [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, M/M, Masquerade, Memory Alteration, Romance, Web Series: Tales from the SMP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29953260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullyerased/pseuds/fullyerased
Summary: (n.) the feeling of longing for something or someone who you love and which is lost.
Relationships: Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Series: mcyt word-inspired works [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204091
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	saudade

**Author's Note:**

> all people depicted are characters, not the irl person.

“Sir Jacobs, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Sir Billiam has had the fortune of introducing me to you, and frankly, it’s been the best fortune he’s ever blessed upon me.”

“I could only say the same,” Karl purrs. 

The butler cracks his fingers before beginning to glide his fingers over painted black and white spruce keys. The piano erupted into a medium-paced waltz, letting the attendees ease into a familiar rhythm before maintaining a steady beat. 

The guests of this masquerade ball were all adorned in masks and face coverings, shielding their identities to their dance partners and those nearby. Even though some could easy be told by garments and hair, such as the owner of this manor, it was a polite gesture nonetheless to remain oblivious. For the two dancing in the center of the ballroom, though, neither had ever laid eyes upon each other. 

Sir Billiam III joined in momentarily with a whine of a violin, adding to a fantastical whim that sung hymns into the atmosphere. The netherrack-ridden walls bounced back the noise, keeping it echoing in this very hall. 

One of Karl’s hands was wrapped around James’s shoulder, gripping on his bicep, the other clasped in James’s out to the side. James had an arm around Karl’s waist, guiding him through the waltz. They danced like angels among men, lights from the aethers casting down on them in a tease. 

“It’s appalling to think I could’ve been dancing with you my entire life and not some run-of-the-mill woman who only leeched off of my money,” James sighs with a loll of his head, bringing it back up to smile handsomely at Karl. “I doubt you’d do such a thing.” 

He bore a mask that Karl had once seen in some time, in some place. It only covered half of his face, his skin a tannish color with the beginnings of a dark-colored beard. His hair was pushed back up his head without much reinforcement, a few hairs falling in front of his eye. His mask was china white, curling under his chin and over his forehead. 

It was a contrast from Karl’s mellow butterfly one, a dull violet color. It hid nothing but the place around his hazel eyes, fluffy brown hair spilling over and shaping his face. James swore that his hair would feel like a cloud itself if he touched it. No gentleman would do that, though. 

The night was young and so were the two dancers. Unfortunately, their host had other plans for tonight.

Until their timely end, they’d get lost in each other’s eyes, since that’s all they could recognize each other by. 

“Oh, I surely doubt that,” Karl giggles, his movements with James in tandem. “I’m well off on my own, as you know, being a minecraft streamer,” Karl drawls, staring into James’s single visible eye, a dark chocolate color. They were glossed over with the champagne he drank earlier, a desperate attempt to drown his many sorrows away. He should’ve left them at the door. 

James shakes his head with a smug smile, which Karl only caught half of. “Look at you, all high and mighty with your streaming career. If I didn’t know better, you should be taken down.” The music swings with a drop, Sir Billiam III’s solo ending with a low note from the piano. 

The divorcee dips the enchanting stranger in his arms low. Karl gasps dryly, his hands wringing behind James’s neck. 

“ - a peg,” James whispers. Karl attempts to lean in close to James, but he’s swooped up just as elegantly as he was put down. The music returns to its cheery beat. Karl curses Billiam. 

Karl turns his focus back to James as the two join the circle of dancing pairs. The red lanterns set in place flickered out of anticipation, the scent of musty smoke gathered at the ceiling. Karl did his best not to gag; it’s been a while since he’s been dropped in a time like this. 

James picks his feet up with the beat, a flute joining the music. Karl keeps up, matching pace as James gently pulls the two flush. The former breaks eye contact first to look away with a red blush, his hand in James’s grasp squeeze.

“What’s wrong, Sir Jacobs? I didn’t see you drink yet, you look flushed.” The words fall right off of James’s tongue, hot with an alcoholic slur. It was intoxicating; Karl could get drunk just from the sound, but he’d rather the taste. 

Karl blinks back to reality, feeling himself get pulled off by some unknown feeling in his gut. He let himself be twirled while other pairs twisted their ladies, falling back into step with James. He leans forward, temples brushing against each other slightly. 

“Nothing.. no, I haven’t.. I’m.. just enjoying this moment.”

James’s chest heaves with a hearty laugh, one Karl could feel with the breached distance between their two bodies. James’s mask is cool against his cheek. 

“If it were up to me, I’d let this moment continue on forever,” James sighs happily, dipping his head towards Karl’s neck, but his nose hovered over the skin, not touching quite yet. “Could you imagine that? A reality, a world, where our lives could be so much different yet us still together? My, no wives, no kids, just us. I know it is wrong, but I can’t seem to idle the idea of-“

Karl allows the other man to ramble his fantasy, drinking his words with a fever only matched by hopeless romantics and drunkards. No interruptions, as the noise of nearby couples drone into a listless lull. The only thing he could hear besides the man before him was the orchestra’s slowing tempo, notes becoming purposeful and daunting. 

“ - that be great, agreed?”

Karl spins around James once more, maintaining the lock of their eyes throughout. He was at attention, a silly little smile playing on his lips that James easily mimicked. 

“I would trade a million other world to simply indulge myself in the one you speak of, my loving James,”

The butler hit a note with finality. The red glow of the lanterns is blown out by an invisible and unfelt wind, gusting through the ballroom. 

“But I say with a heavy heart,”

Crimson-colored vines crawl underneath floorboards, slipping out and drawing innocents to their end. The lanterns from the ceiling above flicker tauntingly before something is unclasped with a thunk of metal. The flute hits a high note. 

“It was never meant to be.”

The chandelier that hung above the unbeknown crowd fell. The lanterns die out with the wind. 

Someone screams. It’s Lord Sebastian, his partner in blue crushed beneath the chandelier’s glass shards and metal frame, lifeless. There’s a shriek of metal being drawn. Nobody could see their own hands in front of their eyes. The ballroom had been plunged into darkness

“ _Run_!!” bellowed Sir Billiam III. “Murder is amongst us! _Murder_ , dare I say!!”

Murder himself stood in black shadows, a white glaze cast over his back from the moon’s rays through the manor’s front window. Black and white, piano keys. 

The piano had silenced. 

James was gone with the same gust. Karl watched his world speed by without him at the steering wheel, and Karl watched as his friends were murdered with no sliver of mercy. 

James had laid in a pool of his own crimson halfway into the night, staining and seeping through the floorboards. His throat was slit with his esophagus severed, blood gurgling. Karl screamed over his body, clutching the fallen man’s hands in his own. Sir Billiam III had casted him an eye, raising a thick eyebrow in suspicion. The blood bled through the floorboards and drip, drip, dripped below. 

_You became attached._

Drew P. Wiener had been beheaded, still wearing his atrocious red mask. Crimson seeped through the bookshelves, staining books from years long ago. His body was gone. 

_You were foolish._

Lyaria had been stuffed into a barrel, her limbs dismembered and pulled ruthlessly from sockets. Her pale eyes were missing, darkness behind the holes of her beautiful pearlescent butterfly mask. The barrel was rancid. The butler carried it out to the back. 

_You were gullible to believe_ -

Lord Sebastian had been roughly yanked out from Karl’s arms. Karl bit into his hand to keep him from mourning his friend’s disappearance, fearing the same fate. His body was found propped up like a doll against the wall, as though the murderer got bored of its toy.

\- _that you could ever_ -

Oliver now laid dead on the floor, a hand over his chest where his heart should be. The fox mask hid a knife wound on his forehead, blood seeping into his dark-colored hair. Karl saw none of it, ushered away by his host. 

\- _escape this curse._

Karl’s butterfly mask sat on the ground, the only sign of him ever entering the manor. Sir Billiam III and the butler stood at attention near the doorway, enchanted swords in their hands. The Egg rumbled hungrily at them, unsatisfied. 

_Why must you fight us? We only want to_ -

The quartz was cool underneath his face and hands when Karl awoke next. He scrambled to his feet, breath racing, as he took in his surroundings. 

A birch tree the height of the manor sat before him, shards of glass and crystals of ice floating around it in orbit. Silent people walked around, stopping by the base of the tree to open awaiting books. They’d read, close the books, and walk away to another part of the Inbetween. Mindless robots, unaware beings of himself.

.. of the man with the universe’s weight on his shoulders. Atlas got off easy with Earth; the universe was paralyzing. 

Karl Jacobs stood up, legs still shaky from the portal that spewed him onto the floor of the palace like bad food. His dark purple suit had swapped in favor of pure white robes, a spiral of gray painted onto the front. The robes dragged on the spotless ground behind him as he walked, hands holding each other in front of his lap. 

He was not to make a sound, for the Inbetween was silent. 

Karl, instead, silently weeped. 

He read the books, he followed their clues, he went the distance. Every single fucking time, it brought him back to the platform where he could see the intricacies of an universe—his universe. They were all connected, to worlds untouched by another until now. Karl feared for the crimson disease that stormed over these worlds like a tsunami, claiming lives like the red death. 

\- _for you to feel at **ease**. _

There is no ease when all Karl Jacobs did was blame the universe for every hardship he’s endured, every life he’s lost, every heart he’s touched only to watch it be ripped to mere shreds before his eyes. For every person he’s ever met in the entire scheme of life over for them to be torn from his arms time and time again. 

Karl sank to the ground and curled up. An opened book laid at his kneecaps, a despicable thing that Karl only wanted to throw off the side of the Inbetween. Such act would ruin the silence. 

He sniffles, bringing a hand to his nose to wipe at it pathetically. No one was there to console him, no one to brush his tears away for him. He was alone, he’s always been alone, by himself in the universe, one man against a foe so powerful that even the fiercest of demons bent at the hip for it. 

The Inbetween was once solid underneath him. A moment later, the illusion shattered, and Karl fell. 

Freefalling never felt so frightening. 

Spirals of lime green and purple and orange and blue circled around him, an aggressive rainbow that left Karl seeing stars. Shiny things flew in front of his eyes—pocket watches, ticking in his ears and ticking around him in a race to catch up. Hands flew in circles, trying to figure out where he was, what time he was in, what was he. 

Time itself did not like Karl Jacobs. He’d say their relationship was a waste of it. 

China white masks and butterflies flutter past him, hands swimming against the current only to be washed away by red. The colors of his rainbow bled out, crimson overwhelming him as a world anew dawned to him. Karl craned his head back, tumbling through debris and vines and shroomlights and rumbling as he neared the end of this vortex. 

Tears left the man’s eyes when he fell from the sky, a limp form easily mistaken for a meteor. 

Karl sat up in bed, laid underneath a red comforter with white dots on it. From the room next door, he could hear soft sobs. Who was grieving?

An arm was thrown around his waist. A shirtless, tanned man with a beginning of a beard laid in his bed, calming inhaling and exhaling against his pillow, oblivious to the unknown man in his bed. 

They didn’t know each other. Karl didn’t know him, and Sapnap didn’t know what new man would wake up in his bed every Saturday morning. 

A shimmering book laid on his bedside time with a poster taped to the front of it. For such celestial beings, they could’ve secured the poster better, Karl thought as he reached over. He drags his finger across the fine leather of the book’s cover. He lifts the poster up, wiping his fingers across the giant spiral on the front of the book. Beneath it was the engraved number five in silver. 

A black and white photograph was stuck into the inside cover. It held a smiling man with darkish skin and a china white half-mask, holding another close by the hip. The other’s face was scratched out messily. Karl felt no recognition for the other person. 

That’s fine.

Karl looked up in the glass mirror that hung on the nearby wall. He couldn’t recognize the man in the mirror either. 

**Author's Note:**

> The Masquerade is just a knockoff of the Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.. in this essay I will-  
> I was told I write Karl well so I wrote him- yay. I saw a theory circling around with the whole Karlnap soulmate idea that Sapnap will always be Karl’s soulmate regardless of the world he’s in, so I thought that was cute and turned it into angst :]  
> Won’t write a part two, don’t ask.  
> Kudos and comments are appreciated. Stay safe!


End file.
